More and more devices are being replaced with autonomous and semiautonomous electronic devices. This is especially true in the hospitals of today with large arrays of autonomous and semiautonomous electronic devices being found in operating rooms, interventional suites, intensive care wards, emergency rooms, and the like. For example, glass and mercury thermometers are being replaced with electronic thermometers, intravenous drip lines now include electronic monitors and flow regulators, and traditional hand-held surgical instruments are being replaced by computer-assisted medical devices.
These electronic devices provide both advantages and challenges to the personnel operating them. Many of these electronic devices may be capable of autonomous or semi-autonomous motion of one or more articulated arms and/or end effectors. When the articulated arms and/or the end effectors include redundant degrees of freedom (i.e., more than the six degrees of freedom typically associated with Cartesian x, y, and z positioning and roll, pitch, and yaw orientations), the articulated arms and/or the end effectors may provide extensive flexibility in adjusting to changes in patient size, position, and/or orientation as the articulated arms and/or the end effectors are used to support medical procedures. This is possible because the redundant degrees of freedom allow the articulated arms and/or the end effectors to be positioned so as to avoid collisions among themselves, the patient, and/or other devices and personnel in an operating room and/or interventional suite.
Many medical procedures call for high precision in both the positioning and/or orientation of medical tools and/or devices. For example, medical procedures involving percutaneous ablation (including RF, cryo, microwave, and/or other forms of ablation), percutaneous needle biopsy, bone drilling, pedicle screw placement, seed planting, marker placement, medicine delivery, high magnification imaging, micro surgery, and/or the like often call for very precise control of not only the position of a device tool tip, but control over the orientation and/or advancement of the tool tip within a patient's anatomy.
Traditional approaches to the problem have relied on the skilled and steady hands of medical personnel operating a respective medical device. However, even the most skilled and steady of practitioners may not be able to ensure adequate placement and/or orientation of the medical device, especially, when significant force is used to advance the tool tip, such as when working in rigid anatomy, such as bones. Further, it may be difficult for the medical personnel to easily adjust to movements in the patient's anatomy and/or the patient or surgical table on which the patient is positioned.
Other approaches have relied on the use of tool jigs that are attached to the patient or surgical table, mounted on table-side stands, mounted to ceiling fixtures, and/or the like. Many of these tool jigs, however, may have limitations in their degrees of freedom, size, and/or the like that significantly limit their ability to be used with patients of different sizes, different positions within the anatomy of the patients, and/or with different procedures. These tool jigs may also have a limited ability to adapt to changes in patient position and/or orientation during a procedure. Additional flexibility may be obtained by using different tool jigs for different procedures, but the number of possible patients, positions, and/or procedures may involve an unacceptably large number of tool jigs.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to develop systems and methods for using the flexibility of computer assisted articulated arms and/or end effectors to provide a tool guide for medical devices.